Midnight Patrol: Adventures in the Dream Zone (partially lost English audio of British-American syndicated animated TV series; 1990)

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MP-HBNewsletterImage.png

The show's title card, sourced from the Hanna-Barbera Newsletter.

Status: Partially Lost

Midnight Patrol: Adventures in the Dream Zone (named Potsworth & Co. in European territories) was an American-British co-production between animation studio Hanna-Barbera and Sleepy Kids Ltd. (later Entertainment Rights) that aired on syndication as part of Hanna-Barbera's syndicated block "The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera" in 1990, and later reran for almost a decade on BBC as part of the "Children's BBC" block.

The series, based on stories created by Martin and Vivien Schrager-Powell, starred a group of kids, who, when going to sleep, found themselves in the "Dream Zone" where they become the titular "Midnight Patrol," who solved problems or conflicts that happened there. The members were Carter, a boy who had the ability to make any object real via his paintbrush, Keiko, a girl with a fixation on her skateboard, Rosie, a girl who didn't have any ability whatsoever (but had similar bratty traits with characters such as Lucy from Peanuts) and Nick, a little boy who gained the ability to fly like a superhero. Tagging along were Potsworth, Carter's dog who is usually sarcastic, often breaking the fourth wall to comment on the events happening around him, and Murphy, Nick's toy dinosaur.

Availability

Despite the show's popularity in Europe (to the point of being the 2nd most popular children's show in the United Kingdom, after Neighbours),[1] the show got only a select few of its episodes released on VHS, and none on DVD nor any other formats. This resulted in the episodes becoming hard-to-find online, but episodes of the show were unearthed as years went on. Furthur tying up the knot is the show's copyright status: The rights to the show are tied between Warner Bros. Discovery (evident from the show's run on Cartoon Network back in the 1990s) and NBCUniversal, who owns the show via Classic Media's library.[2]. Despite NBCUniversal owning the global merchandising rights, which would've likely included home media releases, Warner Archive has confirmed that they own the home media rights to the show, making it possible for the show to receive a DVD release under the WA label.[3]

In 2010, a total of four episodes (albeit separated into three parts) were uploaded by John Feaster sourced from Cartoon Network reruns, with continuity bumpers left intact. The next year, two episodes, alongside one episode that had already been found by Feaster the year before, were uploaded by Canterville, this time separated into two parts. A few years later in 2014, "The Wishing Whale" would be uploaded by 90Geeza, who then uploaded two more episodes four years later. The last of the show's episodes to surface as of this writing is "Night of the BedBugs", which was unearthed by Times Past in 2020 sourced from a recording on Children's BBC.

Currently, this leaves three episodes remaining: "The Dozer Walks Among Us," "Dozer Quest" and "Rosie's Extra Sweet Day." As of 2023, only a small fragment of the latter remains on a CBBC Breakfast Show continuity video uploaded by jimbob8434 (alongside two snippets of Potsworth's dialogue on a TCC bumper), alongside a small fragment of "Dozer Quest" that was found by TAGGS on a continuity video for the now-defunct network The Children's Channel. The rest of the episodes' duration, however, are currently only available in German or Italian-dubbed audio.

Episode List

# Episode Title Status
1 Night of the BedBugs Found
2 The Dozer Walks Among Us Lost
3 King Potsworth Found
4 The Nightmirror (1 | 2 | 3) Found
5 When Bubba Rules (1 | 2 | 3) Found
6 Nick's Super Switch Found
7 Dozer Quest Partially Lost
8 Rosie's Extra Sweet Day Partially Lost
9 I Was a Teenage Babysitter Found
10 The Wishing Whale Found
11 Santanapped Found
12 Save the Cave Found
13 Rosie's Fuss-Attack Found

Gallery

Images

Footage

Continuity of CBBC Breakfast Show, with a brief clip of "Rosie's Extra Sweet Day" present in the first seconds of the video.

Fragments of "Rosie's Extra Sweet Day" from a TCC bumper.

Continuity bumpers for the show's original run.

Promo for the Funtastic World block, featuring the show.

See Also

External Links

References

  1. UK: Making it Tough for Tots - SLEEPY KIDS Retrieved 23 Dec '22
  2. Classic Media - Potsworth & Co. Retrieved 23 Dec '22
  3. Next Hanna-Barbera set? Retrieved 13 Jan '24